DNS Frequently Asked Questions

    General Questions:

  1. What is DNS?
  2. Where can I learn more about DNS?
  3. How can check to see if DNS is working?
  4. Domain Management:

  5. What is an "A" record?
  6. What is an "MX" record?
  7. What is a "CNAME" record?
  8. What is a WebForward™?
  9. What is Cloaking?



  1. What is DNS?

    DNS is the technology that ties text-based domain names to the numeric IP Addresses that are necessary to locate the domain's server on the net. Click here to view a simplified picture of how DNS works.

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  3. Where can I learn more about DNS?

    • Click here to view a simplified flowchart of how DNS works.
    • The DNS Resources Directory is an excellent place to start, containing a good list of DNS information.
    • ISC BIND is the standard in DNS server software and is distributed for free at isc.org.
    • O'Reilly publishes Dns and Bind, an excellent book, and the industry standard manual for understanding and using DNS.
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  5. How can check to see if DNS is working?

    A frequent mistake is to use "ping" to test DNS. On Windows NT/2K and Unix, there are tools called "nslookup" and "dig".

    - Before you contact ZoneEdit, you can check to see whether or not your registrar is pointing your domain to the correct nameservers. The "whois" information is often wrong, and should not be used. Go to a command prompt/console and enter the command:

    nslookup -type=NS yourdomainname.com
    If the response does not contain all of the correct name servers, then you should contact your registrar and have them fix it.

    - To check to see whether a particular server is responding, you can add the server name:

    nslookup www.yourdomainname.com ns1.zoneedit.com
    If the response has a bunch of 'root-servers' that means the server does not know about the domain name and is referring you elsewhere.

    - To look for a certain record type, like the "MX" record or the "SOA" record, you can use the parameter "-type=MX" or "-type=SOA".

    nslookup -type=MX yourdomainname.com

    - If you don't have access to "nslookup" or "dig", you can use our online DNS lookup tool instead. It works for all domain names - not just zoneedit ones.

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  7. What is an "A" record?

    An "A" record, also called an "address" record, ties a domain name to an IP address. If there is a server on the Internet that is configured to handle traffic for this domain, you can enter the name of the domain (like "www.ZoneEdit.com") and the IP address of the server (like "209.81.71.236"), and almost immediately, anyone surfing to that domain connects to the correct server.
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  9. What is an "MX" record?

    "MX" ("Mail eXchanger") records are used to specify what server on the Internet is running e-mail software that is configured to handle e-mail for your domain. If you want your ISP to handle routing the e-mail for your domain to you, you need to specify the domain name or IP address of your ISP's mail server. In addition, you can specify the rank of each mail server when you have more than one. Make sure your ISP knows that you're using their servers to route your domain's email, or all your e-mail will "return to sender"!

    If you want to use our servers instead of your ISP's, don't specify any "MX" records, just configure our simple MailForward service!

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  11. What is a "CNAME" record?

    "CNAME" records, short for "Canonical Name", create an alias from a domain name to another. You could create an alias from "yahoo.mydomain.com" to "www.yahoo.com", and every reference to "yahoo.mydomain.com" would go to the other location, regardless how yahoo changed their IP addresses! Be careful, however; CNAMEs won't work everywhere. If you create an MX record, and the name used for the mail server was defined using a CNAME, you might lose e-mail!

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  13. What is a WebForward™?

    A WebForward™ creates a hidden "A" record pointing to our web server. When our web server gets a request for your site from a visitor, our web server is designed to forward the visitor to the URL of your choosing.

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  15. What is Cloaking?

    Cloaking is a special kind of WebForward™. Just like a WebForward™, cloaking creates a hidden "A" record pointing to our web server. However, when our web server gets a request for your site from a visitor, not only does our web server forward the visitor to the URL of your choosing, but an invisible frame is used to hide the destination URL. Your domain name stays in the location bar of your visitor's browser, thus "cloaking" the destination URL.

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  17. What is a MailForward™?

    A MailForward™ creates a hidden "MX" record pointing to our email server. When we receive an email on your behalf, our email server is designed to forward the email to the address of your choosing.

    Expert tip: If you use "*" for the new email address (or just leave it blank), then all email going to your domain will get sent to the destination address, if it doesn't match another email address you've explicitly specified. Also, specifying the same new email address twice with different destinations will cause a copy of the email to get sent to both destinations!

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